FRANKFURT, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Solar power panel sales rose
for the first time in four years in Europe last year, but only
because of a rush in Britain to get new solar power supplies
hooked up to the grid before the government cuts the feed-in
tariffs to be paid to electricity producers on new
installations.

About 8 gigawatts (GW) of new photovoltaic generation
capacity was connected up to electricity grids last year across
Europe, an increase of about 15 percent on the previous year,
said the Brussels-based SolarPower Europe industry association,
formerly known as EPIA.

It said last year's rise, the first since 2011, was driven
by demand in the UK market, where 3.32 GW of new capacity was
installed in 2015, data from the UK Department of Energy and
Climate Change (DECC) showed.

However, the British government confirmed in December it
would cap total spending on feed-in-tariffs as well as cutting
tariff rates from February 2016 and close the so-called
Renewable Obligation, a support scheme aimed at utilities, to
new solar PV capacity of 5 megawatts and below from April.
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